23 February 2017
Dangerous Leanings
38 Degrees and Trump: too similar for comfort?
by J.R.Thomas
Avalanches are best avoided, as anyone who has witnessed one, or worse still been caught in one, will aver. They are suffocating, all powerful, and destroy almost everything in their path. Not, you might think, a great idea, to name your organisation after them – unless you are running a demolition company. The on-line campaigning organisation 38 Degrees, though, proudly proclaims that it is the idea of the avalanche that inspired its name – “38 Degrees is the angle at which snowflakes come together to form an avalanche – together we’re unstoppable” it trumpets on its web page. It’s a nice image, forming an unstoppable force for change, though maybe not such a great idea to characterise your supporters as snowflakes. Let alone the underlying message that you are into unstoppable destruction.
38 Degrees was founded in 2009 to harness the power of the internet as a form of mass communication in support of campaigns to bring issues to the attention of the media, the public, and ultimately government. It was initially funded by a number of charities, including the Esme Fairburn, the Barrow Cadbury, and the Joseph Rowntree Trusts, all well known for a leaning towards social action, who supported a small group of individuals of, shall we say, generally left leaning tendencies, to set up 38. They were led by Gordon Roddick of Bodyshop, the cosmetics chain, who wanted to commemorate Anita Roddick, a very committed social activist herself, by a form of living campaigning memorial. 38 Degrees has grown rapidly and refers to itself as having over three million members, a claim which, if true, would be remarkable from a standing start over seven years and put it on the tails of the National Trust and RSPB. But to be a member of 38 Degrees, a snowflake, it is merely enough to sign one of their on-line petitions; no subscription, no form filling, no background checks. The organisation’s operating costs and campaign funding comes from small private donations, nearly all from individuals, giving an income of around £3.5 million in 2015/16.
The modus operandi is to run campaigns which well up from those who are members, to try to bounce government, sometimes big business, into doing something, by displaying the vast weight of snowflakes metaphorically cascading unstoppably down the mountainside towards it. The causes can be almost anything (though one suspects that attempts to lower tax rates for higher income groups or to allow City banks to become less regulated, for example, would not find favour). There is a daily cause promoted by excitable, often shrill, emails sent out to their vast email contact list. Yesterday’s was headed “Unfair: Amazon. The government wants to give Amazon a break – a tax break”… which turned out not to be a government initiative to improve the quality of life along the Amazon River, but a more prosaic protest against the recently concluded business rates review.
Now, using the 38 Degrees approach, Amazon has a sight more members than 38 Degrees, if we count each purchaser from the Amazon web site as a “member”; indeed the Amazon ones are prepared to pass actual money across. 38 Degrees wants us to protest about the effect of the change in business rates on small businesses, who it says will pay more, and big business, especially the enormous and hated Amazon, who it says will pay less. Very unfair that would be. Only that is not what the review is doing – it is generally imposing smaller increases on buildings in economically weaker areas and greater on those in prosperous areas. It is not, directly or indirectly, an attempt to favour Amazon, though Amazon shoppers might favour a reduction in their cost base so they can get even cheaper prices – actually that might be worthy of a campaign (sponsored by Amazon, we don’t want potential conflicts of interest).
Not keen on that? Plenty more causes to put your electronic signature to. “No more corridor deaths in Worcestershire Royal Hospital” is a good one, though perhaps it is not campaigning so much about alternative locations to meet one’s maker as the need for more wards; “Tell Theresa May to stand up to Trump”; “Protect Sherwood Forest”; “Switch to paper cotton buds”. These may or may not be good causes; you may or may not know something about them so that you can make an informed decision about the costs, the threats, the benefits. But you won’t get that on the 38 Degrees website which is a straightforward appeal to emotion, based on some currently hip beliefs – Trump bad, Big Business bad, NHS envy of world, trees good. (What paper cotton buds are, apart from an apparent contradiction in terms, is not clear, but would seem to involve more tree felling and less employment for working people in the poverty stricken parts of the globe which tend to produce cotton.)
The rise in sites such as 38 Degrees (it is far from the only UK site to encourage crowd pressure for change or action, but is probably the market leader) stems from the introduction of the on-line petitioning of parliament, a facility introduced under the Blair government, which became so popular that it was suspended in April 2010, but brought back in late 2011, and rebased again in July 2015, with increased capacity and a promise by government to consider debating petitions which reach more than 100,000 signatures. Such debates have actually been rare, not surprisingly considering that in the first year 36,000 petitions were submitted to the portal. But there is no doubt that mass petitioning can be effective in some areas, especially where government is nervous or uncertain as to elector’s views – or where there are some easy giveaways. Most petitions call for things to be done, almost always involving the spending of public money. A popular perennial is of course the National Health Service with nearly a thousand current submissions, but other recent campaigns deal with planning – more homes, though not on the green belt, and a new contender, asking government to keep town parks open and free and well maintained (no word as to how this might be funded, or whether this might conflict with getting some more wards open in the Royal Worcestershire Hospital). There is a lot of what is called in American politics “praising motherhood and apple pie” which makes it very easy to get large numbers of signatures – 338,000 and rising on the town park one.
It is easy to make fun of these campaigns as over emotive, failing to balance the complex choices that are required in reality (how many would have signed the park one if they had to enclose £10 to kick start a local park fund with their vote?). The overuse of the system has degraded it in the eyes of the politicians and civil servants and raised false expectations among the voters as to what might result. But they do tell our governing class what it is we are worried about, bring causes to public attention that might otherwise languish, and put power in the direct hands of the people rather than the traditional media. All this mass opinion manipulating and expressing is of course part of the populist phenomenon which has brought President Trump to the Oval Office, led to the Brexit vote, and may well create a new chapter in French politics. The board of 38 Degrees and its young energetic staff would be astonished to be equated with Mr Trump, but they are undoubtedly riding the same wave, or, rather, surfing the same avalanche. What permanent changes to the political landscape the fast moving snow might create is yet to be fully seen; maybe, like snow in spring, it will just melt away.
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